Republican Senator Announces Affair

And I don’t mean a Bar Mitzvah. Nevada Senator John Ensign held a news conference Tuesday to reveal that he had an affair with a campaign worker. Ensign says “I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions.” His wife Darlene says their “marriage has become stronger” and “I love my husband.”

Elected in 2000 and reelected in 2006, Ensign has been a leading conservative among Senate Republicans, playing a key role in demanding the resignation of Larry Craig in September 2007. Ensign called Craig a “disgrace” after he was arrested in June 2007 in an airport men’s restroom on disorderly conduct charges. Craig resisted the calls from Ensign to resign but retired from the Senate last November.

Ensign doesn’t see all sex scandals the same way. He had a different standard for Larry Craig’s scandal than for that of Louisiana Senator David Vitter.

Why, host George Stephanopoulos wanted to know, did the Republicans act so swiftly to get U.S. Sen. Larry Craig to quit after he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct charges after allegedly trolling for gay sex in a Minneapolis airport men’s room, but say virtually nothing about the antics of U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., whose name showed up in the phone records of a Washington D.C. escort service?

Well, Ensign said, those things happened before he got to the Senate. And, “He has not admitted to anything.”